We would like to thank the local libraries, schools, and universities for recommending students
to visit us when doing research on any of our information topics.
Please check back frequently as new topics are added and current topics are updated daily.

RSS, Feeds, and Aggregators

When you work online all the time, immersed in bits and bytes,
hands automatically resting on the keyboard, where the lingua
franca is a mish-mash of acronyms and abbreviations - it is easy
to forget that the average person has no clue what we talk about.
It can be very daunting for the Internet neophyte with all these
terms, technology and hardware. That's why I wrote this. Because
I don't want people to be afraid to either ask (via comments on
this thread) or to click/use buttons they don't know or use.

Way back when I started blogging (6-7 months ago!), I was a
complete n00b in these blogging terms too. Now while I'm not
exactly the lead programmer at RSS central I do know a thing or
two, but when I really think about it I'm only just paddling at
the moment so maybe I can help others get into the paddling pool
too!

RSS

Really Simple Syndication, let's break it down into the real
basics. It is essentially a broken down look at the web
page/site, stripping all the presentation and layout, and
removing all the neat graphics and cool toys that generally
clutter webpages. What's left is an RSS file (in XML format).

Surprisingly out of 1,000 blog readers (who are themselves a
small elite minority among Internet users) 66% have not even
heard of RSS and 23% said they understood but did not use it.
Where do you stand?

Feeds

This is just a another way of writing what RSS can do. Feeds
are a blog's (or site's) method of syndicating content, arranged
concisely in an XML format and, as mentioned above, stripped of
any extraneous presentation. The "feed" comes from aggregators
requesting that RSS file to display as content for their
subscribers (feeding their need for your well-written
articles!).

Aggregators

It's a straightforward description for what it is: it
aggregates RSS feeds from whatever source you tell it. These are
also sometimes called "newsreaders" although this term is falling
out of favor.

There are two types: software and web-based. Software has a
following - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aggregators#Desktop_news_aggregators,
but web-based is beginning to draw more of the usage. Rapidly
expanding online aggregators such as http://www.bloglines.com/,
or http://my.yahoo.com/ are leading the way. With blog traffic up
31 percent since the beginning of the year, readers will need a
way to sort through the blogosphere, and aggregators are that
way.

The main advantage of aggregators is that they allow you to
gather all your feeds in one place, and read them without having
to navigate all over the place.

Adding Your Feed

You will have noticed button labeled RSS, often times they are
orange rectangles (they are also labeled XML). That is the feed
button - clicking it will show a lot of XML code. Note the URI,
copy it. Then go to your aggregator, software or web-based, and
paste that URI as the feed address and save. That will allow the
aggregator to know where to fetch the feed and it will do it
automatically from that point on.

What's The Advantage?

A big advantage to RSS is that you, the subscriber, is in
control. Let's say you go to xyz.com and look for an article on
Blogging software. You find it, but there are advertising
banners, fly-ins, pop-ups, and then just as annoying you have to
click three or four times to go to the "next page" with yet more
of the same. With a feed (and appropriate aggregator) you get
just the article (content) without all of the extra stuff.

The Future of RSS

So what is in store for us with RSS? I don't have a crystal
ball but some things are plain to see. The future of RSS is
bright and yet at the same time likely to be mired in
specification wars, mainly due to Microsoft's insistence that
they rename RSS to 'web feeds' for the upcoming IE7 release. You
can read more about this hotly debated subject at
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/76104/microsoft-defends-rss-rebranding.html
and at http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/009849.html

There is no doubt though that RSS is here to stay. It has
become an integral part of the blogosphere, a method of
aggregating large amounts of content from hundreds of blogs into
one place. From a blogger's point of view RSS is essential to
building and keeping an audience. Wary of clicking on
subscriptions, Internet users finally have a way to grab your
content (updated every day, right?) when they want it. For the
blogger they now have a way to syndicate their articles, sharing
them among other sites who publish those articles. Those who
syndicate get content, and the blogger gets exposure.

Site pagination is a wily shapeshifter. It's used in contexts ranging from displaying items on category pages, to article archives, to gallery slideshows and forum ...

RELATED ARTICLESCould There Be A New Way
Of hearing The News Stories We Feel Are Relevant In Our
Lives?
Mainstream media has become a single-minded authority on
how we should perceive life. Theirs is a negative
perspective.
Profit Pulling Niche
Blogs with Wordpress
When it comes to building and creating profit pulling niche
blogs niche sites) Wordpress really shines and really beat
Blogger.com heads down.
How To Display RSS Feeds
on Your Website
This article is intended as a guide for webmasters who want
to display automatically updated content on their website
in the form of RSS feeds. In this article I will cover the
easiest method to implement using javascript for displaying
RSS on websites to create additional dynamic content.
How Weblogs can Help
Realtors
What is a weblog, well simply put a weblog is a journal
that is kept online. In it's simplest form a weblog will
have an article every day or week that says what the person
is doing.
How Blogs Can Be An
Excellent Promotional Tool
Blogs as an online promotional strategy if done right could
save you huge dollars in reaching out to people. This is
also a medium where you need have absolutely no dependence
whatsoever on any professional help and you can do
everything yourself.
RSS is a Life Raft, Saving
Us from a Sea of Useless Information
One of the main problems with the Internet these days is
the fact that there is so much information out there; it
can be quite hard to find the particular knowledge that
you're looking for. It can often feel like you're surfing
waves of thick chocolate fudge sauce and your honeycomb
board has a crack that's getting wider by the second.
Why I Use Bloglines as
My Default RSS Reader
Choosing a decent RSS reader to browse and read your
favorite RSS feeds was not a straight forward task. I
tried and tested many different windows desktop readers but
I ended up uninstalling them for one reason or another.
Why Blogs Have Become
the Search Engine Optimization Equalizer
ALEXA WEIGHS IN..
The Hybrid Blog and
Ping
For the past two years, one of the best SEO inclusion
tactics was the use of blogs. Blogs have become a base
standard in SEO marketing, but as times change, so does the
efficacy of any tactic.
RSS
Explained
What is RSS? To begin with, it's one of those things
everyone says is easy to understand. And it is, as soon as
you have your own 'ah-ha' moment.
Feeds For Small
Business: Real World Examples
A merchant I was talking to the other day asked to me,
"Aren't feeds for bigger companies with IT people on
staff?" All they knew about feeds was that bigger companies
, news providers etc., were using them.
How to Use Blogs for
Free Targeted Traffic
One of the Number 1 traffic building secrets is adding
content to your website. Have you ever considered that a
blog could be the tool that makes this very possible, fast
and extremely easy to do.
How using RSS will
attract and maintain visitors
There are nowhere near the amount of webmasters using RSS
that there should be. There is more exposure about RSS than
there has ever been but take up of RSS still seems to be
slow.
Business: Deliver
Information Safely
Businesses that are not using feeds today, as part of their
marketing and advertising plans, will soon do so, or should
thinking of implementing them soon. Although this is a
fairly new communications tool it is growing rapidly.
Top Ten Reason to
Publish an Ezine AND a Blog
Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes
to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a way of delivering
your messages and article to clients.
Blogs for
Kids
Flush out the writer in children. Blogging could draw out a
young writer and open doors to their future.
Use RSS Feeds to Improve
Search Engine Optimization and Ranking
RSS is rapidly becoming a "must have" for a proper search
engine optimization. But what exactly is RSS? RSS or Rich
Site Syndication (or Really Simple Syndication, depending
on who you ask) is a file format similar to XML, and is
used by publishers to make their content available to
others in a format that can be universally understood.
How to Build a Niche Site
With a Blog
Building niche sites is all the rage these days.The basic
strategy is very simple.
Podcasting vs.
Blogging
The US Navy blogs. Larry Kudlow of CNBC blogs.
Blogs Are About Getting
to Know Yourself Better
I still consider myself to be a blog writing novice but as
I've got a few entries under my belt I can tell you about
an unexpected bonus of this journaling process. A lot of
people think that blog writers are just people who are
tooting their own horns blabbering on self-righteously
about what they believe to be true in life.